The Positive and Negative Affect Scale (“PANAS”) questionnaire is a self-report mood scale that measures current mood. The PANAS questionnaire is a 20-item questionnaire designed to measure positive and negative affect with little overlap. The questionnaire consists of 10 words relating to positive affectivity and 10 words relating to negative affectivity. Individuals are instructed to rate each item on a 5-point scale reflecting the extent to which they experienced the emotion during the past 24 hours (i.e., likert scale). The likert scale for each item ranges from 0 (very slightly or not at all) to 4 (extremely). The two key dimensions of affect that were used to develop the PANAS questionnaire items are valence and intensity.
The self-monitoring of health states is critical for health improvement on the individual level and for meaningful health research. But, unfortunately, there are some significant barriers to self-monitoring of health states via questionnaires, such as the PANAS questionnaire. Such questionnaires can be time consuming and counterintuitive (e.g., rating emotions on a likert scale).